Over the course of 2022 we produced questions for Isaac Physics, an online study tool developed by the University of Cambridge. Isaac Physics questions are self marking practice questions for secondary school and undergraduate scientists.
They cover a diverse range of applications of physics in weather and climate, including sea level rise, radar frequencies, aerosols, oceanic circulation, tidal barrages etc.
These questions are now live and fully searchable on the Isaac Physics website.
Africa is one of the lowest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet key development sectors are already experiencing widespread losses and damages attributed to human-induced climate change.
Students complete a knowledge organiser.
Climate change has increased heat waves (high confidence) and drought (medium confidence) on land, and doubled the probability of marine heatwaves around most of Africa.
Heat waves on land, in lakes and in the ocean will increase considerably in magnitude and duration with increasing global warming.
Most African countries will enter unprecedented high temperature climates earlier in this century than generally wealthier, higher latitude countries, emphasising the urgency of adaptation measures in Africa.
Lesson and Homework resources
Wildfire is a natural and essential part of many forest, woodland and grassland ecosystems, killing pests, releasing plant seeds to sprout, thinning out small trees and serving other functions essential for ecosystem health. Excessive wildfire, however, can kill people, the smoke can cause breathing illnesses, destroy homes and damage ecosystems.
Students complete a knowledge organiser.
A Meteorologist’s Guide to the Sky
Author:Liam Dutton, Geordano Poloni (illustrator)
Year: 2022
Publisher: Templar books
Suggested age range: 9-12
Price: £16.99
Liam Dutton’s new 77 page book is a vibrant weather guide aimed at ‘budding weather presenters and meteorologists’. Rosie, aged 10, wrote:
“I enjoyed reading the Weather, Camera, Action book. I particularly liked learning about different air masses and how wind can bring different weathers to the UK.
If you want to learn about the weather and you are interested in it then I would definitely recommend this book to you, there are some great descriptions and facts in it. It explains climate change and pollution, teaches you about wavelengths and gas molecules and it also taught me that weather can be dangerous such as heat waves, dust storms and tornadoes.
Some younger children may find it difficult to understand because of the hard vocabulary but there are lots of great pictures and diagrams to help them access the book and the text is broken up into chunks, so overall I would recommend this book to older primary school children.”
Although it has an introductory ‘meet the author’ this is not a personal narrative about the weather Liam has experienced and reported. Rather, it takes a fairly standard reference book approach of breaking the book up into 34 two-page topics with a glossary at the end. Topics cover atmospheric features such as the jet stream, clouds, tornadoes, air pollution and sting jets as well as weather charts, forecasts and presenters. So, to be honest, the ‘camera, action!’ bit of the books title is a little lost.
As you’d expect from a book written by a meteorologist, the content is accurate and current with case studies ranging from the historical 1952 smog and 1987 storm to the 2019 European heat wave.
The format is visually appealing, content-rich and accessible without being cluttered or confusing.
It could be argued that, for a generation that is very unlikely to access weather forecasts on the TV, the book is missing information about using online and social media sources of information – there’s little in this book which couldn’t have been written 20 years ago. On a related note, the book takes the now fairly dated approach of tacking climate change on to the end as a bit of an afterthought –weather, climate and climate change are inexorably linked and I would have been happier seeing it integrated into the rest of the book.
This book should appeal to many young people and would be a good, solid addition to any primary school library.
This review has also been published in Weather.
This morning, skies were orange/ beige across much of England as a Tropical continental (Tc) air mass brought Saharan dust.
Image credit: Geoff Jenkins
Read more about why the air was carrying so much dust, and see some stunning photos from Spain and France here. The further the air travelled, the more dust was deposited and the less dust remained in the air – so the most vivid skies were in the south.
Read our guide to air masses for background information or show our YouTube explainer.
How can you tell that there is Tc air from this weather chart (midnight on 16th March 2022)?
The air approximately follows the isobars, shown as thin lines on this chart. To work out which way, you need to look at the pressure systems and remember that air goes clockwise around anticyclones (H) and anticlockwise around cyclones (L).
Considering either the 962mbar Low or the 1033mbar High shows you that the air is coming from the south (a southerly wind) across England.
Following the isobar marked 1020 back, you can see that the air has come over Spain from Africa. This is a Tropical continental air mass.
Behind the occluded front, for much of Ireland, the wind coming from the west. The 1020mbar Low is a bit misleading, but you can see that the air coming up from the south diverts to curve round it in an anticlockwise flow.
14th March 2022 is Mars Day.
Establishing the radiation or energy budget of the Earth has been crucial to understanding climate change, but what do the radiation budgets of Mars and other planets in our solar system look like? Read about it in this article from Physics Review or this one from Science in School.
You can find the energy budget images for all the planets mentioned here.
We have created a new resource in time for International Women’s Day 2022, exploring the links between two of the Sustainable Development Goals – gender equality, and climate action.
Taking information from this weeks’ InterGovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability as well as some of the relevant highlights fromCOP26, teachers can adapt the resource to suit their class.
We have created a new worksheet which allows students to collect information and create a case study of a named UK storm. As part of the worksheet, students collect and annotate weather chart and other information about the storm including weather warnings.
Storm Eunice is given as a worked example.
We have made two new explainer films which can be seen on YouTube:
All About the InterTropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ)
We are delighted that our “Weather and Climate: a Teacher’s Guide” resource has been awarded a Highly Commended in the Book Category for this year’s Scottish Association of Geography Teachers (SAGT) Publishers’ Awards.
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